It began with a Rose
by EmbersSpark
Summary: Some things may be different, but for others, they are very much the same. Somewhat different telling of Phantom, with my HC Erik
1. A kiss of fire

He is Erik. Not that that name was given to him. It was a name he chose, over hearing it from a man at their door once. He only saw the man's shoes, but he sounded like a nice man. Nicer than the woman who he only knew not to call mother.

OoO

As if the kiss of the devil were not already plain as the day on his face. Her son, no! That creature had the very eyes of the devil itself, great golden orbs glowing in the blackness, or the strike of direct light. Sure, in the light of soft sunlight they were a sea green with blue churning beneath, but she refused to check on him at night, lest she receive that golden stare.

She had nursed the baby at her breast until the midwife left with her glances of pity, the young new mother playing the part of a good caregiver to that loathsome creature, only before snatching her breast from it in favor of the milk from their goat that ate the flowers in their neglected garden. She would not give her body to that creature.

Surely this had to be why her husband was gone from this world! A deal with the devil for a child in her barren body, and his life needed as payment it seemed. Snatched from her side so the Devil could sooner walk the earth and spread his damnation.

She could only laugh bitterly in the darkness with the thoughts in her mind some nights, amidst heaving sobs of grief and revulsion. Just thinking of that thing in the basement made bile well up in the back of her throat as her skin crawled. Whispers in her very soul told her to kill it, but she knew that that sin would only send her to the damned lands of Hell itself, and that was the plan of the creature. It had to be. Sometimes madness would creep in, a brightness that outshone all of the strife that had been present for so, so long, but then the light would fade, and she would be left alone once more, in a crumbling home with a demon in its cellar.

OoO

Erik never knew his mother's name. He knew her disdain for him, her hatred, and the revulsion that accompanied it. But, never her name. She was never even "mother" to him, eventually just thick swatches of linen skirts that he wasn't allowed to touch. It took only so many swinging blows to the head before one learned to avoid a cause of pain. He of course knew better than to look at her face for that same reason. He had only thread bare trousers, slowly unraveling to shorter and shorter cloth as he grew. Those, and the mask. Erik had a mask of course, he could never forget the mask, dark scratchy cloth that he knew better than to take off. His mother's requirement if he should want to eat, much less be in her presence. He knew better than to question it.

The frail boy would steal glances every now and then, peering through the crack beneath the door that lead to his dark and damp home in the cellar, seeing fair skin and long dark hair shining in muted sunlight. When Erik was young and did not yet know to hold his tongue, he compared his hair to hers, only to have her rage consume him, accompanied by a pair of brutal kitchen scissors close to his scalp. The cellar was cold for some time after that, the cold seeping into his bare head through the ragged patches of once thick black hair.

Nothing had ever been worse than when she had asked him if he wanted to see what she was afraid of. The boy had been sitting in the kitchen floor, scarfing down a small plate of dinner, if it could even be called that. She was in her chair by the window as always, watching the horizon for something. Someone, his mind whispered to him. He had leapt at the chance though, ignoring a gut feeling of fear and warning, willing to do anything to indulge in something to learn of this woman. The woman who made him. He didn't have to wait long. Under the illusion of a gentle hand the woman snatched Erik roughly by the arm, dragging him nearly off his feet and into another room he had not been in enough to remember. She shoved him to his knees in front of a mirror, the pain of bone striking wood causing tears to well and a cry to escape his throat. It was nothing compared to the sight that waited for him in the glass after she roughly tore the mask from his face.

He would have scrambled back in fear if he had been able too, but long nails dug sharply into the frail frame of his shoulders, holding him there. Her thumbs pressed hard into the base of his skull, keeping his gaze forward despite his fear. He moved, and so did that image. Tha-That monster was the same as him, it moved and blinked just as he did.

While the beatings had been savage, there was no memory of wounds and pain so bad that could cause the destruction reflected across from him. If he had still had his rich locks of hair, it may have lessened the severity. But with his head shaved near bare, Erik saw the cause of his frequent beatings. A great savagery took over the right half of his face staring his hair line and cutting down the midline of his face, the tissue of his nose on that side angry and distorted. It did not stop there though, for that would be a blessing. His mouth was given no relief from the horror, with thin lips and a great plumpness on the right side, that very corner turned down in permanent sorrow. The skin was ravaged across his cheek and to his ear, the cartilage twisted and shaped so that it barely held the shape of what it should be. His right eye was free of lashes and brow, the skin a stark and pale where it was saved from the deep twists and gouges made by God's hand. It was if his face was wet clay left to soften and distort in the rain.

At first, he thought it was those feminine hands at his shoulders shaking him, distorting his vision, but soon found he was trembling, hard enough for his teeth to rattle within his jaw and his legs to sag beneath his thin frame. The sunlight caught the glass and nearly blinded him, but not before he could see that shining gold gaze that his mother beat him for should she come to see him in the night. After that, he knew only the comfort of blackness, not feeling when his bare body crashed to the floor. It was a blissful freedom of time before he awoke in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the cellar stairs to nausea and the cool soil beneath him. Though now he was captive by another prison, for one couldn't escape their own face.

After that torture, if his mother ever blessed him with a question. Erik always said no.

As he grew though, so did her loathing. She became simply her, in his mind. Erik found himself looking less and less, content with the songs in his head. Occasionally he would steal books in the night, soft, small hands eagerly tracing the artwork in the inches of sunlight that he was allowed when the light fell just so into the house in the days after a calculated escape. She is a chain around his ankle, for he knows that if he should leave this cellar for escape, that she will send something after him until he ceases to exist.

OoO

It is on the anniversary of her husband's death that she has chosen to take no more. No more of this house and the demon in its cellar. She drinks slowly at first, small sips of whiskey she used to sip on the porch with the love of her life. But as that warmth seeps into her, the hatred in her heart blooms like a flame. Soon the bottle is empty, and she cannot find her feet. The bottle smashes against the wall a moment later, a star burst of shattering glass and dripping liquid. She has managed to catch the edge of the lone mounted oil lamp, shattering the globe and spilling the contents across the floor. It should be cleaned a voice says in the back of her mind. There is always the hell of tomorrow she replies.

The room sways dangerously and she briefly hopes that this is it. The end to her suffering and the pain with it.

The mother of the monster falls heavy and retches, body rejecting the mass amount of toxin eating away at her gut. Her head catches the edge of the bedside table, though numb with pain and sickness, she feels nothing as blood pools beneath her head on the rough wooden boards of the floor. A pale arm reaches out for anything and nothing, knocking roughly against the table and smearing blood in a wide arc across the floor. She heaves violently as darkness takes her sight, wondering with a moment of clarity, if it was worth it. As she loses consciousness, the candle on the bedside lists to the side, falling at a slant until it rolls to rest amidst a puddle of oil, the flame licking eagerly against the pool of fuel.

OoO

Erik is five when he is free from her, though he does not know his age, and will not for some time.

It is a noise that wakes him in the night, a noise that is not common at this time in the house. It is a drip coming from above to land on the floor boards just above his head. The floorboards are creaky and loose, and while he does not hear footsteps, he is not surprised about a leak. He knows of rain of course, bathed in its frigid pelts to remove the earth of the cellars before returning to his dirt lined home. He lets the steady pattern of drops lure him off to sleep, and hopes that he does not dream.

The smell is what wakes Erik from his slumber the second time, a film floating into his sinuses causing a sneeze that jolts him into wakefulness. He attempts to scrape the dirt from his hands off on his trousers before wiping his face, but the feeling persists with an acrid taste in the back of his throat. There is a great crackling above him, and he can almost perceive the shifting of the house.

He moves slowly up the rickety cellar steps to the door leading into the kitchen, a buzzing in his ears of combined sounds and pressure. Heat reaches his hand before he can touch the latch, and it's after deliberation before he snatches his mask from its place on his head, thick black matts brushing his cheeks after being freed from the scratchy cloth.

The latch is still warm through the layers of burlap and when he releases it from the catch on the other side of the door, he is met with a wave of heat that makes his eyes water. Erik shields his eyes with a forearm, the sudden brightness of a roaring blaze nearly blinding him. The home has been nearly consumed while he slept, with flames licking their way down the walls from the ceiling above. There is a part of him that knows that his mother is gone. He does not know what to do with that information, or how to feel about it.

The need to survive takes over and he is crouching low over ash dusted floor boards. There is a great crack above him and one of the support beams falls behind his frail body, cutting off any access to the dark cellar that had been his home for so long. A noise of terror leaves his throat, turning into a wet cough as smoke chokes him. The room is growing steadily hotter, singing his hands and the fine hair on his limbs as he scrambles on his hands and knees to what he knew was the front of the horse.

He has the door open after a minor battle with the lock when another crack sounds above him, and he is knocked to the floor by a great weight from above. Stars explode behind his eyes and it is only a moment before pain sears into him like nothing he has ever felt. Nails tear and bleed as he claws at the floor below him, desperate like a trapped animal to escape. With a flailing kick and a cry he scraped from beneath the chunk of structure and tumbles out of the threshold into damp vegetation. With the weight free, he expected the pain to end, but the pain is still present, a stinging burn that feels like the flesh is being pulled from his bones.

Erik heaves a wet gasp as he sits up amidst tall grass, coughing on a noise of horror as he looks down. His right shoulder looks like wax that was left in the sun for too long, warped and angry beneath a cracking layer of blackened flesh. Fluid is already seeping from the cracks in the wound, each drop purging a wave of agony from his battered body. A great clap of thunder rolls over head, a flash of lightning lighting the grass below his body for an instant with a holy white light.

Rain follows soon after, great cold drops bringing a kiss of relief before they roll down with blood to spatter the grass. Looking back, he takes one last look at his home and his prison before he hauls himself onto shaking legs to stagger in the direction of the dirt road he had seen through a window once upon a time.


	2. Thistle

It It isn't long before the glow of the fire blanketed house leaves his sight when he looks over his shoulder, leaving him with an inky black night beneath a clouded night sky. The rain makes multiple passes as he staggers through the mud, unwilling to risk dangers in the waist high grasses. His pants slip on him with the weight of the water, and he tightens the rope around his waist to hold them up.

Exhaustion begins to creep up his spine with the sunrise, his legs tiring as a faint pink rises before him at the horizon. With a life of small spaces and inactivity, even a walk of a few hours has drained him.

The boy makes it up the next rise of the rolling country hills before his bare foot catches the edge of a stone hidden in the mud, sending him sprawling before impact on his damaged shoulder. The pain re awakens the agony he had numbed himself too, a sob catching in his throat as he rolls, screaming as he curls the injured limb to his gut for any means of protection.

He is tired. And so before he has a choice, he sleeps.

* * *

Erik is awoken by his stomach. He is no longer hungry, but there is a churning within his gut that causes him to heave violently into the grasses before him. The bile yellow against thick green grass, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He crawls a few feet before staggering upright, the pain in his shoulder flaring with each breath. He doesn't know if he is going the right way, but his head feels like it is full of spider webs, and he is unsure of where he was supposed to be going. There is no house behind him, nothing to return to.

He has passed little to nothing save for a few sparse groupings of trees amidst the rolling fields of grasses. Birds had peered at him with tilted heads, curious from their nested roosts, but did not take flight into the cooling air. He had heard of seasons from his mother before, there were threats of being cast out into the brutal sun of summer, or the bitter cold of winter. He had learned his lesson from a time forced in each to comply quickly, even if he had done so the first time.

When Erik looks down his frail form some time later he sees redness below the stark blackness of his charred skin, the crimson seeming to try to claw its way to his heart. He has to stop to vomit on occasion, amidst the tremors of chill wracking his body. It is hard to stay up right after these attacks.

The sunset helps him see the destination, shining lanterns in the dark of the horizon of a town in the distance. The blackness creeps in quickly though, and not just that of night. He falls into the mud once again, he has not been counting the tumbles during his journey. A tear falls from his eye before dripping into the soft soil, running free against his will, on a mission to clear foreign debris from his eye. Why is he crying? Where is he?

He briefly hears a soft rhythm in the distance, a thrumming behind a steady beat. Erik tries to pick himself up, but his arms refuse to move, and he cannot lift his head. Eventually he allows the pattern to draw him to sleep.

Sleep releases him as his body seems to be lifted from the cold earth, unclear words spoken above him, a hard surface beneath him. He is jostled to and fro, but does not have the strength to open his eyes. There is nothing of his mind until he is moved, this time a scream catching in his throat as his injured flesh is disturbed. There is a second voice, and then a third, the last hushed with calm. Something soft is beneath him then, and then there is silence.

* * *

He wakes up in agony, only to turn onto his side to vomit. There is a wooden pail waiting for him there, and he finds himself on a soft surface above the floor, body regecting the lack of contents in his gut. A bed? Something cold is pressed against his forehead, and he scrambles backwards towards the wall, a noise of pain catching in the back of his throat as the sudden movement jars his abused body. His head is pounding and his lungs feel heavy and raw from the smoke of the fire.

A woman is kneeling by his bedside, startled by his quick movements with a look of something he doesn't recognize in her pale eyes. Slowly the boy relaxes, moving inch by painful inch to recline back in his resting position, only flinching mildly when the cool touch returns. It's a damp cloth, worn soft with frequent use, and the feel of it soothes the skin agitated by fire and sun. His eyes dart from her to the ceiling above him, skittish of looking for too long.

She has thick straw-colored hair, woven into two thick plaits on either side of her head, with stormy grey eyes set into her fair skinned and heart shaped face. Her skirts are of a deep, natural indigo, offset by a cream-colored apron to match the sleeves of her chemise. Her voice startles him, so unlike that of the woman that lived above his basement home.

"Do you know where you are Darling?"

"N-No."

His voice is a raspy whisper and he coughs, the action wet and painful as it jars his body. He can feel something slimy on his tongue and spits a glob of blackness into the bucket beside his bed. The woman offers him water in small amounts, and after the first sip he is leaning up to drain the cup.

"Easy. We need to go slow now, getting sick again won't help you."

He nods his understanding, and rests his head back on the softness of the bed, his skull sinking into a pillow as sea green eyes focused on the ceiling.

"Can you tell me where you are from? How you came this far?"

Erik swallows thickly, a cough racking his body once more, though this time it is free of debris.

"I slept in the cellar of a house by the road. It caught fire. It was a long walk here."

"Your mother, family? Did anyone survive?"

This gives him pause. He did not see her during his escape, nor after as he carried himself from the burning wreckage.

"The woman was not there when I escaped. The ceiling came down on me after I came out of the cellar."

"The woman?"

"S-She told me I was not to call her mother."

He hunched in on himself with reflex, the memory of her beatings oh too clear within his raw consciousness. It took a few minutes for him to relax when no beating followed, receiving another one of the strange looks from the woman at his bedside.

"Well, you're safe now. You can call me Mrs. Maggie. Why don't you get some rest while I fetch some more water from the well.

* * *

Erik is woken up by another fit of coughing, the body's attempt to clear his lungs jostling his small form with pain swiftly following. He makes a small noise, but grows quiet at the sound of voices, hushed for silence outside of his door.

 _"-only five, though as small as he is, maybe younger. I told you something wasn't right with that woman. Not after what happened to her husband."_

 _"Don't get started on that again. You heard from the man with the wagon as I did, the house was burned to the stones."_

 _"Argus, that face is not from whatever that boy saw in the fire and you know that."_

 _"Maggie, what can we do for this boy? He's not going to make it. And even if he did, he's not natural."_

 _"That's enough of that. What if it was that woman who did that to him. She never brought her babe into town, and nobody ever checked on her, after there was word of the death of her husband they may as well just have given her to the wolves."_

 _"Because it isn't of their concern, and it shouldn't be ours either. I still don't understand why the boy is taking up one of our beds."_

 _"I will not cast that boy out to die in the storms. He walked within a mile of town. In his condition. He should be dead, but he's not. I'm pulling for him even if nobody else will."_

 _"He's got a fever. What can you do? This is God's plan for the boy."  
_

 _"Then I will give that boy love until his final breath, and pray for him to reach the heaven he deserves."_

* * *

 _The next few days pass in a feverish blur for the boy, body wracking chills and bouts of vomiting waking him from his sleep. Sometimes the woman interrupts him to eat, small spoon's worth of something she says is called broth. It soothes his sore throat, and warms him from within. He begins to dream of her soft smile amidst the flashes of heat and fire that plague his dreams._

 _There's a clatter that wakes him one day, as if a great many people are standing beside his bed, oblivious to him. It takes most of his energy to turn his head, finding only an empty room and the door that closes off his world, left open a gap. Erik catches glimpses of bright colors against movement and olive skin._

 _He blinks, assuming he must have dozed off, when there is suddenly a face peering around the edge of the door at him, finding it not worth his energy to question the prese_ nce he looks back. His head feels like he is looking through burlap again, but without the holes through his eyes, a thick veil cutting him from the world of the living. His teeth begin to chatter as a face comes closer, a body revealed from behind the door with a strange wooden thing held by a strap across their chest.

He can see her clearly once she is at his bedside, bright eyes staring from an aged face, her skin lined and wrinkled like the soft dirt of the cellar floor he lived upon.

She takes the small wooden stool by his bedside, a small noise leaving her as she settles herself. Her words are broken as she speaks, but his tired mind eventually pieces it together. She pulls his quilts up higher, the soft and worn wool tickling his chin.

"You no mind an old woman, yes?"

She moves the strange wooden thing to settle in her lap, and he looks at it curiously, good eye admiring the carvings on shining wood. The strings and pieces of metal confuse him. What is this thing?

She talks to him, but he fades in and out of sleep, stirred by loud voices and laughter, and the painful cough coming from deep within his chest.

Erik stops his sluggish thinking as she plucks the first few strings along the long thin piece of wood, the noise off the thing filling the room with soft something that takes all of his attention.

It reminds him of the sighs of the house above his head in a wind storm, steady wood creaking over strong stone in a pefect sense of rightness.

His mother used to do something like this with her voice, late at night amidst her crying. This is different though. It hangs in the air, light somehow as it settles upon his broken form to put his body at ease, bringing the first feeling of peace he thinks he has ever known.

"What is this?"

He is able to get the question out without much coughing, the rest of a few days after the fire assisting in clearing the smoke from his lungs. It s the first time he has spoken since answering Mrs. Maggie's questions.

"Is the music of my people. You like, yes?"

"Yes."

She smiles at him, a gummy thing with a few teeth spaced unevenly through her pink maw. He can feel his racing heart slow, and fights a yawn, knowing the movement will only cause his healing skin to crack and bleed.

 _Music._

 _In the feverish haze he remembers the word, and the beating that flowed him when he first learned of it._

 _His mother had been making a noise as she prepared his meager meal, like her voice, but rising and falling like the soaring creatures he had glimpsed outside through the windows. When he had asked what is was, she had given him a level look, the answer coming from her thin lips, sharp and biting._

 _"Singing. A type of music."_

 _He had answered as any child would when chasing after praise, acknowledgement. Her voice was lovely, and he loved music! She had grasped him hard by his hair, now hanging shaggy and matted near his ears, telling him only that people with faces of the devil, did not deserve music. Erik ate swiftly after that, a desperation to get back to his cellar clawing its way up his spine like bile in his throat._

* * *

He wakes up some time later. The old woman is still beside him, looking tired as she stares at her hands. She is weaving something together between her hands, a large spool of red material resting bellow her rhythmic moving hands, the smooth wood of the two sticks she uses gliding silently.

The hinges of the door creak as it opens, a tall, olive skinned man with dark eyes and hair entering on heavy feet. Erik's instincts cause a tingle in his spine, and he lets his eyes close, feigning sleep. He has never seen his man before, but something about him is wrong, and his body itches to flee the room so he is not confined with the man.

"Ah there you are mama, you should be in a bed. We will only have them for a few days. The mattresses are wool."

"I am content here my son. You should be resting after seeing us through our journey."

The man makes a small noise, but is otherwise silent. Yet he does not leave, and Erik can sense when he is moving closer, feel the wash of his stale breath over his sensitive flesh. The old woman speaks, her voice firm and cold.

"Constantin, leave him."

There is a humorless laugh, and then the man leaves with the noise of heavy boots on the wooden floor.


End file.
